As the upper limit of a device is reached, in this case driving the 85 hard, it may exhibit more distortion as well. Sample to sample variances might influence results. Are power drain and the receivers the only difference? I always imagined there was more to it than that. I don’t know though.
Seems most fitters recommend a BTE rather than a RIC beyond 85 receivers. I’ve been told it is distortion that makes for such recommendations.
VinceJ is correct here. I have the OPN1 and was originally fitted by my audi with 85dB receivers. They caused distortion on the high end on my right ear (as you can see my loss from 2KHz and up is 90dB or worse on the right ear) and I had to have the gain dialed down by 4 to 6 dBs in the 4KHz and 6KHz respectively to get rid of the distortion.
I later upgraded to 105dB receivers and the distortion was gone and I didn’t need to make adjustment to correct any distortion. I had to pay $175 extra for each new 105dB receiver with custom dome ($350 total). Once you go up to 100 and 105dB receivers, custom domes are required. I would recommend 105dB instead of 100dB receivers simply because they cost the same and the extra 5dB headroom may help in the future if your hearing gets worse.
Audiometrix_hearing said that the 100 sounds so different, but my personal opinion is that the 85dB and 105dB I have sound pretty much exactly the same, little to no difference at all to me. As for more powerful receivers have more THD (total harmonic distortion), on paper that may be right but in my personal experience, I don’t notice any difference at all between the THD of the 85dB and 105dB receivers at all either.
I think the 85dB would fit you OK and if you experience any distortion like me, the gain can be adjusted down a little bit at the right frequencies to fix that. The 85dB receivers are much less conspicuous than a custom mold for the 100+dB receivers which sticks out a bit more with a big tail/horn that’s totally visible on your ear.
I asked my audi whether I could have been fitted with 105dB receivers up front for the same price instead of the 85dB receivers, and she said no, the original cost only covers up to 85dB receivers with a standard dome. If I go to custom mold and/or a larger than 85dB receivers, I would have to pay more for the larger receivers plus custom molds as extra ($350 extra for the pair/set) anyway. But if you have insurance that would pay for any of the extra cost, I would recommend you go with the bigger receivers up front so this cost is picked up by the insurance. I had 95% insurance coverage and made the mistake of not upgrading to the bigger receivers later so I had to pay the $350 completely out of pocket later on when I could have had my insurance company pay for 95% of it up front. But that’s OK, it’s not that much and I now have a pair of 85dB receivers as back up to use in case I want to have my HAs looking less conspicuous or in case I have to send in my 105dB receivers in for repair or wait for replacement.
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Its true that everyone handles it differently. A 105 with a custom mold might be a good alternative but some people just can’t handle the “plugged up” sensation.
@Volusiano Next time you need a custom 105, let us know. Our price is half that.
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. Half of what I paid for is definitely attractive for sure. I’ve ordered the MiniPro kit (on the way) so I should be able to take care of everything myself now and bypass my audi. Time to take my business to the online channels for sure!
In terms of the plugged up sensation on the custom mold, my custom mold has a vent which actually seems slightly bigger than the vent on the bass dome that I wear with the 85dB receivers. So I don’t get any worse occlusion than that of the bass dome on the 85dB receiver that I had.
It’s interesting that although the custom mold vent is slightly larger than the bass dome vent, I didn’t have to enable the feedback control on the custom mold like I had to with the bass dome. So it confirms that the custom mold is a better fit as expected.
Its all about how it fits in the canal. That custom mold is specially made for you, those generic domes are not. When you get that perfect fit with the correct size vent, that can be an amazing combination for some people. Ive had patients, that no matter what you did, could not handle molds. So you had to get creative with lesser power speakers.
Glad to hear you have the mini pro on the way. Did you get the software too? Keep in mind that the Genie 2 available for download is not compatible with the OPN. Need to get the little flash drive from Oticon.
Oh? This is news to me. @pvc @Abarsanti I’d like to ask PVC and Abarsanti (Tony) if they’re aware whether you need a software from an Oticon flash drive in order to work with the OPN or not. I always assumed that the downloaded Genie 2 version should work just fine because Tony has the OPN and he was able to get it working just fine (even firmware update) with the downloaded Genie 2 software.
I had it happen to one of our programming computers. It has the standard Genie 2 download and we couldn’t program the OPN 3. Called Oticon and they said we needed the newest version, and the only way to get it was them physically mailing it to us. I had a good laugh at how ridiculous that was.
Genie 2 worked right from the start with my minipro without needing any additional software. Downloaded it straight from Oticon and it works just fine for me with my minipro.
That’s interesting. Maybe the latest version of the download had been crippled, restricting its use on the OPN so they can control the SW now? Maybe we have to share older downloaded versions that didn’t have this new restriction?
Possibly, or it might be limited to the OPN 2 and 3. The OPN 1 was out months before they were.
Genie 2 is for Opn, only. Everyting else (aside from Opn) is programmed by Genie.
Plus Genie 2 has an Update feature, Genie Updater.
I don’t have Opn’s yet so I have not yet used Genie 2.
Something doesn’t make sense. Maybe someone got confused? Besides it works okay for @Abarsanti
Ain’t gonna happen. I will eat my hat if it does.
It would create situations like this,
Sorry Mr MegaBucks who paid $7000 or $8000 for your hearing aids, but we have to wait until we get software updates using snail mail. Let’s see it’s Friday afternoon and we can’t get mail until sometime next week. Are you okay with waiting until next Wednesday? Maybe you should have bought Phonaks from the business across town because they update via the Internet.
ETA: Sure were a lot of purple-A Avatars in the forum today. I’ve never seen so many Purple-A’s. I think Jimi Hendrix wrote a song about Purple A’s 
ETA: Latest = Genie2 2017.1 Build 3.315.181.6 / Genie Updater = No updates
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It was related to the OPN 3 and 2. We had Genie 2, but the only option was the OPN 1. There was no way for us to update to the latest version and the rep said there was no download available from their site. We had to wait for the physical flash drive to show up. I raised hell over it because it was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.
I’m not disputing that something happened that required a flash drive update. I’m just saying I’ll eat my hat if Oticon is backing away from automated Internet updates.
Ah, ok. Yeah, I’m with you. I was dumbfounded.
I can see what happened may be that the older versions of Genie 2 was designed to recognize the OPN 1 only because the OPN 2 and 3 wasn’t around until this summer. So when the OPN 2 and 3 came out, the software supplied on the Oticon drive has the update to recognize the 2 and 3 but the software uploaded on their site hadn’t been updated to recognize the 2 and 3 yet. I guess at some point (if not already) they’ll upload a newer version on their download site and it’ll finally be compatible with 2 and 3 as well.
That makes the most sense. I missed the part where you said you got the OPN 1 as opposed to the 3.
By the way, which ones (OPN 1, 2 or 3) are you selling the most of? Or maybe give us a relative percentage totaling 100$, for example, 33% are the 1, 33% are the 2 and 33% are the 3, for example.
Of the people who decided to buy the 2 or the 3, did they ever try out the 1 at all?
99% OPN 3
1% OPN 1
0% OPN 2 (oddly enough not a single person has even asked about it)
Many patients call asking about the OPN 1 that their local audiologist tried to sell them for $6000+ 
We explain how little of a difference there is between the OPN 3 and the 1 and they get the 3.
Several patients insisted on getting the 1 because of said audiologist, but only a handful kept them, the rest switched to the 3.
The only OPN cancellation I’ve seen was a guy that got a 3, then switched to the 1, then cancelled without explanation.
In our industry, that’s a crazy good record for a hearing aid. I’ve never seen a satisfaction rate this high before.
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